The
biography was first mentioned here in February
2005. Warhol's film of
Swan, made in 1965,
is often screened at the Andy Warhol Museum and the shooting of the movie
is covered in the book. If you would like to know when this item becomes
available, please click on the "notify me"button on the publisher's
website.

Andy Warhol

SELF-PORTRAITS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
TORSOS & SEX PARTS

The Dominique Levy Fine Art Gallery in New York is hosting
an exhibit of polaroids and silkscreens of Warhol's Self-Portraits and
Ladies and Gentlemen in conjunction with Salon 94 which will
also be showing Warhol's Sex Parts and Torsos.

The idea for the the Ladies and Gentlemen series
(consisting of images of drag queens) came from a protegeé of art
dealer Alexander Iolas named Anselmino, who had previously commissioned
Warhol to do an
edition of one hundred prints of Warhol's Man Ray portrait. When Warhol
went to Torino to sign the prints, Anselmino suggested he do a series of
drag queens, suggesting portraits of Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and
Candy Darling - not realizing that Candy Darling was dead. Instead, Warhol
used models found at the The Gilded Grape on West 45th Street, frequented
by black and hispanic transvestites.

Bob Colacello: "We would ask them
to pose for 'a friend' for $50 an hour. The next day, they'd appear
at the Factory and Andy, whom
we never introduced by name, would take their Polaroids. And the
next time we saw them at the Gilded Grape, they invariably would say, "Tell
your friend I do a lot more for fifty bucks."(BC228)

Warhol did his Torso and Sex
Parts series
in 1977. According to Warhol's assistant at the time, Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol
would
take polaroids
of of men having sex that Halston's boyfriend, Victor Hugo, would "recruit"
from gay bath houses. A selection of these prints, along with prints from
the Ladies and
Gentlemen series appear in the (excellent) book, Andy
Warhol: Men, currently being
sold by Amazon at a discounted price.

The Dominique Levy Fine Art Gallery is located at 30 East
74th Street in New York. Salon 94 is at 12 East 94th Street. The website
for Salon 94 is at www.salon94.com (click on "upcoming" exhibitions for
information on the current one.)

Further information on these works appears in the 1975-79
section of this website here.

Andy Warhol

David Michael Brown, a British freelance
writer currently based in Sydney, Australia, has contributed the following
news item:

THE ANDY WARHOL COLLECTION
7
CULT FILMS FROM THE FACTORY

Factory
film director Paul Morrissey’s post-Warhol work
is still hard to view, let alone own on DVD. The director is working
on a new transfer
of his 1985 trash classic Mixed Blood but, apart from that,
you have to travel to Australia where, rather bizarrely, Morrissey’s Madame
Wang’s has been released as part of Force Entertainment’s
region four DVD release The Andy Warhol Collection – 7 Cult
Films from The Factory.
Strange, as Warhol had nothing to do with the film whatsoever.

Madame
Wang’s joins Flesh, Heat, Trash, Women
in Revolt, Blood for Dracula and Flesh for
Frankenstein in the collection. The eight DVD box set
also includes an extra disc, Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture,
an edited version of the three-part documentary first shown on Channel
4 in
the UK.

The set doesn’t quite match the gorgeous trilogy
box set of Flesh, Trash and Heat available
in France but as a great way to get
almost all
of the Morrissey/ Warhol films at once, you just can’t go wrong.
All we need now are releases of the super rare L’ Amour and Lonesome
Cowboys to really complete the picture.

An
exhibition of works by Jonas Mekas opened at the Maya
Stendhal Gallery in New York on March 3, 2005. Films
being shown include Cassis, Notes on the Circus, Mozart
& Wein & Elvis, Letters
from Greenpoint, Happy Birthday to John and Travel Songs.
Clips of the films appear on the gallery's website at: www.mayastendhalgallery.com/mekas_films_cassis.html.

In addition to making
his own films, Jonas Mekas wrote a regular film column for the Village
Voice newspaper
and was the editor of Film Culture magazine. Mekas was involved
in the showing and distribution of most
of Andy
Warhol's
film
output
in the
1960s
through
the
Film-makers'
Cooperative which he founded to distribute experimental films.
The films would often be shown at one of Mekas' Filmmakers' Cinematheques
at various Manhattan venues including the Charles Theater (until 1963),
the Bleecker Street Cinema
(where avant-garde films were shown at midnight screenings on
Saturdays)
and
the Grammercy Arts Theater. Warhol's first film, Sleep, premiered
at the Grammercy Arts Theater on January 17, 1964.

Throughout his life, Mekas championed the cause of the
avant-garde even when it meant risking a jail sentence. On March 2, 1964,
when Mekas
presented Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures (along with Andy
Warhol Films Jack Smith Filming Normal Love), at the New Bowery Theater
on St. Marks Place, Mekas
was arrested along with filmmaker Ken Jacobs (the projectionist)
and Florence Karpf (who was the ticket-taker for the screening).
On June
12,
1964
they
lost
their
legal case
and Mekas
and
Jacobs were
sentenced to sixty days in the New York City workhouse. Their sentences
were suspended but, because the court's ruling has never been reversed, Flaming
Creatures remains "obscene" in the boroughs
of Manhattan and the Bronx where it is still technically illegal to show
it. (JS162)

Jonas Mekas: Fragments of Paradise continues
at the Maya Stendhal gallery until April 30, 2005. Full details of the
exhibit are on the website
for the gallery at: www.mayastendhalgallery.com.

Andy Warhol

LAURA RUBIN INTERVIEW

This
month I have added to the site an interview with photographer, Laura Rubin.
Rubin photographed many of Warhol's
stars during the late sixties and early seventies, including Andrea Feldman,
Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Francis Francine and Mario Montez.

Her photographs
have been reproduced in various books on the era, including My Face
for the World to See: the Diaries, Letters and Drawings of Candy Darling and
Holly Woodlawn's autobiography, A Low Life in High Heels.

You can access the interview through the articles section
or by clicking here.

In
June 2005, Penguin will be publishing a 241 page hardback biography of Warhol
star, Jackie Curtis, written
by Craig B. Highberger who also directed the documentary film Superstar
in a Housedress. The book will include a DVD featuring the full
theatrical version of the film as well as more than 30 minutes of extras – including
deleted interview footage, a Curtis prose poem, and scenes from Curtis’ 1974
revival of Glamour, Glory and Gold.

Highberger is currently working on a documentary on the life
and work of celebrity photographer, Jack Mitchell. The Warhol Museum's exhibition
of Mitchell's photographs, Icons and Idols, closes on April 17,
2005.

Amazon is currently offering a discounted price for pre-orders
of the Jackie Curtis book and DVD, here.
Jack Mitchell's book, Icons
and Idols, is also available on Amazon, here.